Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Subject: Re: Omni-Potent
Message-ID: <1994Jan30.152326.7105@cs.tcd.ie>
Organization: Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin
References: <2ic4g0$1ra@bingsunn.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 15:23:26 GMT
Lines: 51

ba01720@bingsunn.cc.binghamton.edu (ba01720) writes:



>Keywords: 

>Hello, I am currently in the process of writing a text adventure for the IBM pc. 
>The game will be titled "The Omni-Potent" and hopefully will be ready for
>interactive consumption in a few months.
>     My main objective for writing this game is to write the kind of text 
>adventure I would like to play myself.  For example, my favorite part of Zork 1
>was wasting the troll, and fighting the thief.  As you may already know, there
>were very few characters to interact with in that game.  I also hate mazes.  My
>game would include a map of all possible locations, and there definitley wouldn't
>be a stupid twistly little maze, or a dense forest.  Does anyone really enjoy
>mapping out an adventure.  I think not!

I enjoy mapping adventures myself so I wouldn't provide a predrawn map,
but I agree with you it should be logical, no mazes.  I agree about
having more characters to interact with as well.

>     Anyways, this game would be loaded with monsters & characters, cool puzzles
>& plot twists, graphic gore descriptions, and wild spells.
>     
>     I just have a few questions that I think only avid IF players can answer.

>1) Is there market for a good IF game?  If you had to guesstimate, how many
>people read this newsgroup.

There's no commercial market for text games anymore; you could make a
little bit of money on it as shareware possibly, but these games
nowadays are basically done for the love of it.

>2) When designing the vocabulary input, should I allow for multiple sentences,
>like "Tie up troll with rope", or just go with "Tie troll" and let the computer`
>figure out if you have a rope or not.  I tend to think 2 word input might be
>better, only because it prevents long, tedious, typing of sentences.  

I don't think this is terribly important one way or the other; on the
whole I'd be inclined to keep it as simple as possible.

>Finally, if you are interested in this game, send me e-mail and I will put you
>on the mailing list.  When it is done, I will send out e-mail to everyone on 
>the list.  

>                                                      Thanks  

-- 
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie
